Where credit is dues

The Supremes belt out another hit

“In the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt. In the public sector, the politicians who approve any deal have none of their own money at stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands, the more likely they are to be the beneficiary of union largesse in the next election. It’s the perfect cozy setup.”

—Charles Krauthammer, 2011

IT IS becoming a habit, this. Once again, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of an individual’s First Amendment rights. As if the Constitution held that Americans had the right to free speech. As if the whole idea were part of the Bill of Rights.

Earlier in June, the court said that a hostile and biased state commission couldn’t force a baker to make a cake for an event that violated his religious beliefs. The other day, the nation’s top court said pro-life groups couldn’t be forced to carry a pro-abortion message in their offices. And in the most recent common-sense decision in favor of the First Amendment, the court ruled that non-union public workers didn’t have to pay union dues.

The “rule” has always been that a person didn’t have to pay for union political activities if he didn’t believe in them. But money is fungible. A dollar that Worker A doesn’t want to be used for political purposes can go toward administration, something that Worker B’s dollar wouldn’t have to do. The Supreme Court’s ruling will make it harder for public employee unions to work the system to achieve their objectives.

The majority opinion, once again only 5-4, based its ruling on the First Amendment. The court said requiring union membership, and union dues, to negotiate with the government as “collective bargaining” forces workers “to endorse political messages that may be at odds with their beliefs.”

Of course, our friends on the left portrayed it differently:

Supreme Court Ruling Delivers a Sharp Blow to Labor Unions

That was the headline in the New York Times. A different way to write that hed: Supreme Court says folks don’t have to support a union if they don’t wanna.

A writer for the Washington Post called the ruling a “devastating blow for U.S. labor unions” rather than an uplifting win for individual freedoms and a devastating blow for compelled speech.

The actors’ guild in Hollywood was heard from, too, and in language printable in a family newspaper. Well, most of it. The guild put out the word that the ruling was “shameful” and “unacceptable,” which probably makes conservatives even more confident the ruling was the correct one.

THE POLITICAL fallout is easy enough to predict. Even those who support forcing public employees to pay union dues say as much: The Democratic Party won’t see as much union money in the years to come. Because the unions won’t have it to give.

One story noted that labor unions contributed more than $760 million to the Democratic Party, its candidates and causes between 2012 and 2016, amounting to about 99 percent of their political budgets. The other 1 percent might have been distributed to some libertarians, if we guess correctly. Surely Republicans didn’t see much of that money.

Which may explain the outcry from certain quarters.

There is an alternative to all this. Public sector unions—and other unions— could demonstrate their value to all the workers they wish to represent, and maintain their size and influence by truly representing those workers. And instead of compelling workers to pay dues, become so valuable that workers will voluntarily join, to reap all the benefits offered.

Or would that be unspeakably too American?